Where were you going to elope to?”
“Wales.”
The girl sat on a stool in the corner of Adelia and Gyltha’s room. She’d torn the veil off her head, and long, white-blond hair swayed over her face as she rocked back and forth. Allie, upset by the manifestations of such grief, had begun to bawl and was being jiggled quiet again in her mother’s arms. Ward, also showing an unexpected commiseration, lay with his head on Emma’s boots.
She’d fought to be there, literally. When at last they’d been able to prise her away from the body, she’d stretched her arms toward Adelia, saying, “I’ll go with her, her. She understands, she knows.”
“Dang sight more’n I do,” Master Bloat had said, and Adelia had rather sympathized with him-until, that is, he’d tried to drag his daughter off, putting a hand over her mouth so that her noise would attract no more attention than it had.
Emma had been his match, twisting and shrieking to beat him off. At last Sister Jennet had advised compliance. “Let her go with this lady for now. She has some medical knowledge and may be able to calm her.”
They could do nothing else, but from the looks Master and Mistress Bloat gave her as she helped their daughter toward the guesthouse, Adelia was aware that she’d added two more to her growing list of enemies.
She managed to persuade the girl to drink an infusion of lady’s slipper, and it calmed her enough that she could answer questions, though Gyltha, who was gently rubbing the back of Emma’s neck with rose oil, frowned at Adelia every time she asked one. A silent argument was going on between them.
Leave the poor soul alone, for pity’s sake.
I can’t.
She’s breaking her heart.
It’ll mend. Talbot’s won’t.
Gyltha might sorrow for the stricken one, but Adelia’s duty as she saw it was to Talbot of Kidlington, who had loved Emma Bloat and had ridden to the convent through snow to take her away and marry her, an elopement so financially disastrous to a third party-Adelia’s thoughts rested on the Lord of Wolvercote-that it had ordered his killing.
Master Hobnails and Master Clogs hadn’t been waiting on an isolated bridge on a snowy night for any old traveler to come along; common scoundrels though they undoubtedly were, they weren’t brainless. They knew, because somebody had told them, that at a certain hour a certain man would ride up to the convent gates… Kill him.
They had killed him, and then they’d fled over the bridge to the village-to be killed themselves.
By the very man who’d employed them in the first place?
Oh, yes, Wolvercote fitted that particular bill nicely.
Though perhaps not entirely. Adelia still puzzled over the lengths someone had gone to in order to make sure that the corpse was identified as Talbot’s. She supposed, if it was Wolvercote, he’d wanted Emma to know of her lover’s death as soon as possible, and that her hand-and her fortune-was now his again.
Yes, but presumably, when Talbot didn’t turn up, that way would have been made open. Why did the corpse have to be put under her nose, as it were, right away? And why in circumstances that pointed the accusing finger so directly at Wolvercote himself?
Do you see what they’ve done?
Who were the “they” that Emma thought had done it?
Adelia put Allie on the floor, gave her the teething ring that Mansur had carved for the child out of bone, and sat herself by Emma, smoothing back the long hair and mouthing “I have to” over her head at Gyltha.
The girl was almost apathetic with shock. “Let me stay here with you.” She said it over and over. “I don’t want to see them, any of them. I can’t. You’ve loved a man, you had his child. You understand. They don’t.”
“’Course you can stay,” Gyltha told her.
“My love is dead.”
So is mine, Adelia thought. The girl’s grief was her own. She forced it away. There’d been murder done, and death was her business. “You were going to Wales?” she asked, “In winter?”
“We’d had to wait, you see. Until he was twenty-one. To get his inheritance.” The sentences came in pieces with an abstracted dullness.
To Talbot of Kidlington, That the Lord and His angels bless you on this Day that Enters you into Man’s estate.
And on that day Talbot of Kidlington had set out to carry off Emma Bloat with, if Adelia remembered aright, the two silver marks that had been enclosed in Master Warin’s letter.
“His inheritance was two silver marks?” Then she recalled that Emma didn’t know about the marks because she didn’t know about the letter.
The girl barely noticed the interjection. “The land in Wales. His mother left it to him, Felin Fach…” She said the name softly, as if it had been spoken often, a sweet thing held out to her in her lover’s voice. “‘Felin Fach,’ he used to say. ‘The vale of the Aêron, where salmon leap up to meet the rod and the very earth yields gold.’”
“Gold?” Adelia looked a question at Gyltha. Is there gold in Wales?
Gyltha shrugged.
“He was going to take possession as soon as he gained his majority. It was part of his inheritance, you see. We were going there. Father Gwilym was waiting to marry us. ‘Funny little man, not a word of English…’” She was quoting again, almost smiling. “‘Yet in Welsh he can tie as tight a marriage knot as any priest in the Vatican.’”
This was dreadful; Gyltha was wiping her eyes. Adelia, too, was sorry, so sorry. To watch suffering like this was to be in pain oneself, but she had to have answers.
“Emma, who knew you were going to elope?”
“Nobody.” Now she did actually smile. “‘No cloak, or they’ll guess.
I’ll have one for you. Fitchet will open the gate…’”
“Fitchet?”
“Well, of course Fitchet knew about us; Talbot paid him.”
Apparently, the gatekeeper counted as nobody in Emma’s reckoning.
The girl’s face withered. “But he didn’t come. I waited in the gatehouse…I waited…I thought…I thought…oh, Sweet Jesus, show mercy to me, I blamed him…” She began clawing the air. “Why did they kill him? Couldn’t they just take his purse? Why kill him?”
Adelia met Gyltha’s eyes again. That was all right, then; Emma put her lover’s killing down to robbers-as, at this stage, it was probably better that she should. There was no point in inflaming her against Wolvercote until there was proof of his culpability. Indeed, he might be innocent. If he hadn’t known of the elopement…But Fitchet had known.
“So it was a secret, was it?”
“Little Priscilla knew, she guessed.” Again, that entrancement at being taken back to the past; the subterfuge had been thrilling. “And Fitchet, he smuggled our letters in and out. And Master Warin, of course, because he had to write the letter to Felin Fach so that Talbot could take seisin of it, but they were all sworn not to tell.” Suddenly, she gripped Adelia’s arm. “Fitchet. He wouldn’t have told the robbers, would he? He couldn’t.”
Adelia gave a reassurance she didn’t feel; the number of nobodies who’d known about the elopement was accumulating. “No, no. I’m sure not. Who is Master Warin?”
“Were they waiting for him?” She had her nails into Adelia’s skin. “Did they know he was carrying money? Did they know?”
Gyltha intervened. “A’course they didn’t.” She pulled Emma’s hand off Adelia’s arm and enfolded it in her own. “Just scum, they was. Roads ain’t safe for anybody.”
Emma looked wide-eyed at Adelia. “Did he suffer?”
Here, at least, was firm ground. “No. It was a bolt to the chest. He’d have been thinking of you, and then…nothing.”
“Yes.” The girl sank back. “Yes.”
“Who is Master Warin?” Adelia asked again.
“But how can I go on without him?”
We do, Adelia thought. We have to.
Allie had hitched herself over to replace Ward by pushing him off and settling her bottom on Emma’s boots. She put a pudgy hand on the girl’s knee. Emma stared down at her. “Children,” she said. “We were going to have lots of children.” The desolation was so palpable that for the other two women the firelit room became a leafless winter plain stretching into eternity.
She’s young, Adelia thought. Spring will come to her again one day perhaps, but never with the same freshness. “Who is Master Warin?”
Gyltha tutted at her; the girl had begun to shake. Stop it now.
I can’t. “Emma, who is Master Warin?”
“Talbot’s cousin. They were very attached to each other.” The poor lips stretched again. “‘My wait-and-see Warin. A careful man, Emma, but never did a ward have such a careful guardian.’”
“He was Talbot’s guardian? He handled his business affairs?”
“Oh, don’t worry him with them now. He will be so…I must see him. No, I can’t… I can’t face his grief… I can’t face anything.”
Emma’s eyelids were half down with the fatigue of agony.
Gyltha wrapped a blanket round her, led her to the bed, sat her down, and lifted her legs so that she fell back on it. “Go to sleep now.” She returned to Adelia. “And you come wi’ me.”
They went to the other side of the room to whisper.
“You reckon Wolvercote done in that girl’s fella?”
“Possibly, though I’m beginning to think the cousin-cum-guardian had a lot to lose when Talbot came into his estates. If he’s been handling Talbot’s affairs…It’s starting to look like a conspiracy.”
“No, it ain’t. It was robbery pure and simple, and the boy got killed in the course of it.”
“He didn’t. The robbers knew.”
“No, they bloody didn’t.”
“Why?” She’d never seen Gyltha like this.
“A’cause that poor girl’s going to have to marry Old Wolfie now whether she likes it or don’t, and better if she don’t think it was him as done for her sweetheart.”
“Of course she won’t have to…” Adelia squinted at the older woman. “Will she?”
Gyltha nodded. “More’n like. Them Bloats is set on it. He’s set on it. That’s why her wanted to elope, so’s they couldn’t force her.”
“They can’t force her. Oh, Gyltha, they can’t.”
“You watch ’em. She’s a high-up, and it happens to high-ups.” Gyltha looked toward Heaven and gave thanks that she was common. “Nobody didn’t want me for my money. Never bloody had any.”
It did happen. Because it hadn’t happened to Adelia, she hadn’t thought of it. Her foster parents, that liberal couple, had allowed her to pursue her profession, but around her in Salerno, young, well-born female acquaintances had been married off to their father’s choice though they cried against it, part of a parental plan for the family’s advancement. It was that or continual beating. Or the streets. Or a convent.
“She could choose to become a nun, I suppose.”
“She’s their only child,” Gyltha said. “Master Bloat don’t want a nun, he wants a lady in the family-better for business.” She sighed. “My auntie was cook to the De Pringhams and their poor little Alys was married off screamin’ to Baron Coton, bald old bugger that he was.”
“You have to say yes. The Church says it’s not legal otherwise.”
“Hunh. I never heard as little Alys said yes.”
“But Wolvercote’s a bully and an idiot. You know he is.”
“So?”
Adelia stared into Emma’s future. “She could appeal to the queen. Eleanor knows what it is to have an unhappy marriage; she managed to get a divorce from Louis.”
“Oh, yes,” Gyltha said, raising her eyes. “The queen’s sure to go against the fella as is fighting her battle for her. Sure to.” She patted Adelia’s shoulder. “It won’t be so bad for young Em, really…”
“Not bad?”
“She’ll have babies, that’s what she wants, ain’t it? Anyways, I don’t reckon she’ll have to put up with un for long. Not when King Henry gets hold of un. Wolvercote’s a traitor, and Henry’ll have his tripes.” Gyltha inclined her head to consider the case. “Might not be bad at all, really.”
“I thought you were sorry for her.”
“I am, but I’m facing what she’s facing. Bit o’ luck she’ll be widowed afore the year’s out, then she’ll have his baby and his lands…yes, I reckon it might turn out roses.”
“Gyltha.” Adelia drew back from a practicality unsuspected even of this practical woman. “That’s foul.”
“That’s business,” Gyltha said. “That’s what high-ups’ marriage is, ain’t it?”
Jacques was kept busy that day, bringing messages to the women in the guesthouse. The first was from the prioress: “To Mistress Adelia, greetings from Sister Havis, and to say that the girl Bertha will be interred in the nuns’ own graveyard.”
“Christian burial. Thought you’d be pleased,” Gyltha said, watching Adelia’s reaction. “What you wanted, ain’t it?”
“It is. I’m glad.” The prioress had ended her investigation and managed to persuade the abbess that Bertha had not died by her own hand.
But Jacques hadn’t finished. He said dutifully, “And I was to warn you, mistress, you’re to remember the Devil walks the abbey.”
There lay the sting. The nuns’ agreement that a killer was loose in Godstow made his presence more real and added to its darkness.
Later still that morning, the messenger turned up again. “To Mistress Adelia, greetings from Mother Edyve, and will she return Mistress Emma to the cloister? To keep the peace, she says.”
“Whose peace?” Gyltha demanded. “I suppose them Bloats is complaining.”
“So is the Lord Wolvercote,” said Jacques. He grimaced, wrinkling his eyes and showing his teeth as one reluctant to deliver more bad news. “He’s saying…well, he’s saying…”
“What?”
The messenger blew out his breath. “It’s being said as how Mistress Adelia has put a spell on Mistress Emma and is turning her against her lawful husband-to-be.”
Gyltha stepped in. “You can tell that godless arse-headed bastard from me…”
A hand on her shoulder stopped her. Emma was already wrapping herself in her cloak. “There’s been trouble enough,” she said.
And was gone down the steps before any of them could move.
Inside the abbey, the various factions trapped within its walls fractured like frozen glass. A darkness fell over Godstow that had nothing to do with the dimming winter light.
In protest against its occupation, the nuns disappeared into their own quadrangles, taking their meals from the infirmary kitchen, their exercise in the cloister.
The presence of two bands of mercenaries began to cause trouble. Schwyz’s were the more experienced, a cohesive group that had fought in wars all over Europe and considered Wolvercote’s men mere country ruffians hired for the rebellion-as, indeed, many of them were.
But the Wolvercoters had smarter livery, better arms, and a leader who was in charge-anyway, there were more of them; they bowed to nobody.
Schwyz’s men set up a still in the forge and got drunk; Wolvercote’s raided the convent cellar and got drunk. Afterward, inevitably, they fought one another.
The nights became dreadful. Godstow’s people and guests cowered in their rooms, listening to the fighting in the alleys, dreading a crashed-in door and the entry of liquored mercenaries with robbery or rape on their minds.
In an effort to protect their property and women, they formed a militia of their own. Mansur, Walt, Oswald, and Jacques, like dutiful men, joined it in patrolling-but the result was that, more often than not, the nightly brawls became tripartite affairs.
An attempt by the chaplain, Father Egbert, to minister to the flock the nuns had deserted ended when, during Sunday-evening communion, Schwyz shouted at Wolvercote, “Are you going to discipline your men, or do I do it for you?” and a fight broke out between their adherents that spread even to the Lady Chapel, smashing lamps, a lectern, and several heads. One of Wolvercote’s men lost an eye.
It was as if the world had frozen and would not turn, allowing no other weather to reach a beleaguered Oxfordshire than a bright sun by day and stars that filled the sky at night, neither bringing any relief from the cold.
Every morning, Adelia pushed open the shutters briefly to allow air into their room and searched the view for…what? Henry Plantagenet and his army? Rowley?
But Rowley was dead.
There had been more snow. It was impossible to distinguish river from land. There was no human life out there, hardly any animal life.
Crisscross patterns like stitching showed that birds, frantic with thirst, had hopped around in the early dawn to fill their beaks with snow, but where were they? Sheltering in the trees that stood like iron sentinels across the river, perhaps. Could they withstand this assault? Where were the deer? Did fish swim beneath that ice?
Watching a solitary crow flap its way across the blue sky, Adelia wondered whether it saw a dead, pristine world in which Godstow was the only circle of life. As she stared at it, the crow folded its wings and fell to earth, a small, untidy black casualty in the whiteness.
If the nights weren’t bad enough, Godstow’s days became morbid with the hit-hit of picks hacking out graves in the frozen earth while the church bell tolled and tolled for the dead as if it had lost the capacity to ring for anything else.
Adelia was keeping to the guesthouse as much as possible; the looks from people she encountered if she went out and their tendency to cross themselves and make the sign of the evil eye as they passed her were intimidating. But there were some funerals she had to attend.
Talbot of Kidlington’s, for one. The nuns reappeared for that. A little man at the front of the congregation, who Adelia supposed was the cousin, Master Warin, wept all through it, but Adelia, skulking at the back, saw only Emma, white and dry-eyed, in the choir, her hand clasped tightly in little Sister Priscilla’s.
A funeral for Bertha. This was held at night and in the privacy of the abbess’s chapel, attended by the convent chapter, the milkmaid, Jacques, and Adelia, who’d folded Bertha’s hands around a broken chain and a silver cross before the plain, pine coffin was interred in the nuns’ own graveyard.
A funeral for Giorgio, the Sicilian. No nuns this time, but most of the Schwyz mercenaries were there, and Schwyz himself. Mansur, Walt, and Jacques came, as they had to Talbot’s. So did Adelia. She’d begged a reluctant Sister Havis for Giorgio to be treated as a Christian, arguing that they knew no harm of him apart from his profession. Due to her, the Sicilian was lowered into a cold Christian grave with the blessing of Saint Agnes.
There was no word of thanks from his friend Cross. He left the graveyard after the interment without speaking, though later three pairs of beautifully fashioned bone skates complete with straps were left outside Adelia’s door.
A funeral for two Wolvercote villagers who’d succumbed to pneumonia. Sister Jennet and her nurses attended, though Lord Wolvercote did not.
A funeral for the two hanged men. Nobody except the officiating priest was present, though those bodies, too, each went into a churchyard grave.
His duty done, Father Egbert closed the church and, like the nuns, retired to an inner sanctum. He would not, he said, hold regular services when any mercenary was likely to be in the congregation; the advent of Christ’s birth was not to be despoiled by a load of feuding heathens who wouldn’t recognize the Dove of Peace if it shat on their heads. Which he hoped it would.
It was a sentence on the whole community. No Christmas?
A shriek went up, loudest of all from the Bloats; they’d come to see their girl married at the Yule feast. And their girl, thanks to malefic influence from a woman no better than she should be, was now saying she didn’t want to marry at all. This wasn’t what they paid their tithes for.
One voice, however, was raised above theirs. With more effect. Sister Bullard, the cellaress, was, materially, the most important person in the abbey and the one who’d become the most sorely tried. Even with the convent’s new militia trying to protect it, her great barn of a cellar suffered nightly raids on its ale tuns, wine vats, and foodstuff.
Worried that the entire convent would soon be unable to feed itself, she turned to the only earthly authority left to her-the Queen of England.
Eleanor had been staying to her own apartments, paying little attention to anything except the effort to keep herself amused. Finding the rest of the abbey tedious, she had ignored its troubles. However, marooned as she was on the island of Godstow for the duration of the snow, she had to listen to Sister Bullard telling her that she faced discord and starvation.
The queen woke up.
Lord Wolvercote and Master Schwyz were summoned to her rooms in the abbess’s house, where it was pointed out to them that only under her banner could they attract allies-and she had no intention of leading rabble, which, at the moment, was what they and their men were becoming.
Rules were laid down. Church services would resume-to be attended only by the sober. Wolvercote’s men must cross the bridge each night to sleep at their lord’s manor in the village, leaving only six of their number behind to join Schwyz’s men in enforcing the curfew.
No more raids on the cellar by either side-any mercenary doing so, or found fighting, was to be publicly flogged.
Of the two culprits, Lord Wolvercote should have come out of the meeting better; Schwyz, after all, was being paid for his services, whereas Wolvercote was rendering his for free. But the Abbot of Eynsham was also present, and, as well as being a friend to Schwyz, he had the cleverer and more persuasive tongue.
It was noted by those who saw Lord Wolvercote emerge from the queen’s presence that he was snarling. “A’cause he don’t get young Emma, neither,” Gyltha reported. “Not yet, at any rate.”
“Are you sure?”
“Certain sure,” Gyltha said. “The girl’s been pleading with Mother Edyve, and she’s asked for Eleanor’s protection. The which the queen says old Wolfie ought to wait.”
Again, this had come from the convent kitchen, where Gyltha’s friend Polly had helped the royal servants carry refreshment to the meeting between the queen and the mercenary leaders. Polly had learned many things, one of them being that the queen had complied with Mother Edyve’s request for Emma’s marriage to Wolvercote to be delayed indefinitely, “until the young woman has recovered from the affliction to her spirits that now attends them.”
Polly reported that “his Wolfie lordship weren’t best pleased.”
Adelia, relieved, didn’t think the Bloats would be, either. But by now, everybody knew what the affliction was that attended Emma’s spirits and, according to Gyltha, there was general sympathy for her, much of which sprang from the equally general dislike for Wolvercote.
There was more good news from the kitchen. With order restored, Eleanor had, apparently, announced that the church was to be reopened, services resumed, and, when it came, Christ’s Mass to be celebrated with a feast.
“Proper old English one, too,” Gyltha said, a pagan gleam in her eye. “Caroling, feastin’, mummers, Yule log, and all the trimmin’s. They’re killin’ the geese and hangin’ them this very minute.”
It was typical of Eleanor, Adelia thought, that having saved the convent’s store of food and drink, she now imperiled it. Feasting the entire community would be an enormous and expensive undertaking. On the other hand, the queen’s orders had been necessary and perceptive; they might well defuse a situation that was becoming intolerable. And if a feast could introduce gaiety into Godstow, by God, it needed it.
With the resurgence of Eleanor’s energy came an invitation. “To Mistress Adelia, a summons from her gracious lady, Queen Eleanor.” Jacques brought it.
“You running errands for royalty now?” Gyltha asked at the door. The messenger had found brighter clothes from somewhere, curled hair hid his ears, and his perfume reached Adelia, who was across the room.
He’d also found a new dignity. “Mistress, I am so favored. And now I must go to the Lord Mansur. He, too, is summoned.”
Gyltha watched him go. “Aping they courtiers,” she said with disapproval. “Our Rowley’ll kick his arse for him when he comes back.”
“Rowley’s not coming back,” Adelia said.
When Mansur strode into the royal chamber, one of the courtiers muttered audibly, “And now we entertain heathens.” And as Adelia followed behind with Ward ambling at her heels, “Oh, Lord, look at that cap. And the dog, my dear.”
Eleanor, however, was all kindness. She came sweeping forward, offering her hand to be kissed. “My Lord Mansur, how pleased we are to see you.” To Adelia: “My dear child, we have been remiss. We have been kept busy with matters of state, of course, but even so I fear we have neglected one with whom I fought against the devil’s spawn.”
The long upper room had been the abbess’s, but now it was definitely Eleanor’s. For surely Mother Edyve had not scented it with the richness of the heathen East nor filled it with artifacts so colorful-shawls, cushions, a gloriously autumnal triptych-that they eliminated the naïve, biblical pastels on her walls. Mother Edyve had never knelt at a prie-dieu made from gold, nor would her bedposts have roared with carved lions, nor had gossamer, floating like cobwebs, descended from the bed’s tester over her pillow, nor male courtiers like adoring statuary, nor a beautiful minstrel to fill the abbatial air with a love song.
Yet, Adelia thought, still astonished by the bed-how had they got the thing on the boat?-the effect was not sexual. Sensual certainly, but this was not the room of a houri, it was merely…Eleanor.
It had certainly drawn Jacques into its spell. Lounging in a corner, he bowed to her, beaming and waggling his fingers. So here he was, and-to judge from the joy exuding from him, his even higher boots, and a new style of hair that hid his wide ears-in Aquitanian fashion paradise.
The queen was plying Mansur with dried dates and almond-paste sweetmeats. “We who have been to Outremer know better than to offer you wine, my lord, but”-a click of elegant royal fingers toward a page-“our cook magicks a tolerable sherbet.”
Mansur kept his face stolidly blank.
“Oh, dear,” Eleanor said. “Does the doctor not understand me?”
“I fear not, lady,” Adelia said. “I translate for him.” Mansur was fairly fluent in Norman French, which was being spoken here, but the pretense that he was restricted to Arabic had served the two of them well, and probably would again; it was surprising what he learned when among those who believed him not to understand. And if Bertha’s killer was somewhere among this company…
What could be wanted of him? He was being treated with honor for someone whose race the queen had gone on Crusade to defeat.
Ah, Eleanor was asking her to pass on praise to Mansur for his medical skill in saving the life of “one of dear Schwyz’s mercenaries”; Sister Jennet had sung so highly of him.
That was it, then. A good physician was always worth having. Christian disdain for Arab and Jew did not extend to their doctors, whose cures among their own people-partly brought about, Adelia believed, by their religions’ strict dietary laws-gave them a high reputation.
So she herself was here merely as an interpreter.
But no, apparently she was a witness to Eleanor’s courage; history was being changed.
Propelling her around by a hand on her shoulder, the queen told the story of what had happened in the upper room of Wormhold Tower, where, in the presence of a rotting corpse, a sword-wielding demon had appeared.
Eleanor, it seemed, had held up a calm hand to it. “Thou art a Plantagenet fiend, for that race is descended from demons. In the name of Our Savior, go back to thy master.”
And lo, the fiend had dropped its sword and slunk back whence it had come.
What did I do? Adelia wondered.
“…and this little person here, my own Mistress Athalia, then picked up the sword the fiend had dropped, though it was still very hot and stank of sulphur, and threw it out of the casement.”
Glad I could help. Adelia speculated on whether the queen believed her own nonsense and decided she didn’t. Perhaps Dakers’s attack had shocked and embarrassed her so that she must now present it to her advantage. Or perhaps she was playing games. She was bored; all these people were bored.
Having oohed and aahed throughout the recital, the courtiers applauded-except Montignard, who, with a dirty look at Adelia, burst out with, “But it was I who ministered to you afterwards, lady, did I not?” though the list of the things he had done was overlaid by a slow hand clap from the Abbot of Eynsham leaning against one of the bedposts.
Eleanor turned on him, sharp. “Our neglect is actually yours, my lord. We charged you to look after our brave Mistress Amelia, did we not?”
The abbot surveyed Adelia from the tips of her snow-rimed boots to the unattractive cap with its earflaps on her head and down again until his eyes met hers. “Lady, I thought I had,” he said.
The queen was still talking. Shocked, Adelia didn’t hear her. The man wished her harm, had tried to procure it. At the same time, she felt his regard, like that of a swordsman saluting another. In a way she had not yet fathomed, she, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, known only in this place as the Bishop of Saint Albans’s fancy and a useful picker up of demonic swords, mattered to Lord Abbot of Eynsham. He’d just told her so.
The queen’s hands were spread out in a question, and she was smiling. The courtiers were laughing. One of them said, “The poor thing’s overwhelmed.”
Adelia blinked. “I beg your pardon, lady.”
“I said, dear, that you must join us here; we cannot have our little helpmeet living in whatever hole the abbey provides. You shall move in with my waiting women, I am sure they have room, and you shall take part in our sport. You must be so bored out there.”
You are, Adelia thought again. Eleanor probably did secretly feel she had a debt for having her life saved, but even more, she needed a new pet to play with. Ennui was everywhere, in the screech of female bickering coming from the next room where the waiting women waited, in the pettish laughter directed at herself, the sense that they had run out of butts for their wit and required another.
This, after all, was a company and queen that left one castle once it had begun to stink and moved on to the next, hunting, entertaining, and being entertained, kept clean and fed by an army of cooks, fullers, laundresses, and servants, many of whom had been left behind on the trail to war that Eleanor had taken, and even more subsequently lost to the snow. Without these resources, they festered.
One of the courtiers was ostentatiously holding his nose over Ward, though the young man’s own person, let alone his linen, was hardly more delectable.
Move in with them all? Lord, help me. She wasn’t going to accept an invitation to step into an overcrowded hell, even when extended by a queen.
On the other hand, if one of these was Bertha’s killer, how better to sniff him out than by asking questions and, hopefully, receiving answers? Move in with them? No, but if, by day, she could have access to the royal chambers…
Adelia bowed. “Lady, you are all goodness. As long as my baby would not disturb your nights…”
“A child?” The queen was intrigued. “Why didn’t they tell me? A little boy?”
“A girl,” Adelia told her. “She is teething and therefore wakeful…”
There was a light scream from Montignard. “Teething?”
“A synonym for screaming, so I do understand,” Eynsham said.
“Our two lords do not like babies,” Eleanor confided to Adelia.
“I do, sweet lady.” This was the abbot again. “So I do. Lightly broiled with parsley, I find them right toothsome.”
Adelia pressed on. “Also, I must assist my master, Dr. Mansur here, when he is called to the infirmary at night as he so often is. I keep his potions.”
“A synonym for stinks and rattling pots,” the abbot said.
Montignard was clasping his hands beseechingly. “Lady, you’ll not have a wink of rest. If that bell tolling the hours and the sisters singing them were not enough, we’ll have the screech of babies and Lord knows what devilry…you’ll be exhausted.”
Bless him, Adelia thought.
Eleanor smiled. “Such a hedonist you are, my swain.” She reflected, “I do need my sleep, yet I am reluctant not to reward the girl.”
“Oh, let her come and go,” Eynsham said wearily, “though not in them clothes.”
“Of course, of course. We shall dress her.”
It was a new thing, it would pass the time.
It was also Adelia’s passport-though she had to pay for it. She was carried through to the women’s room, its door not quite closed, so that male heads poking round it added a chorus of comment to the humiliation of being stripped to her chemise while swathes of material were held against her skin and capless head to be pronounced too this, too that, not mauve, my dear, not with that complexion-so corpselike. Where had she found such fine white linen for her chemise? Was she Saxon that she was so fair? No, no, Saxons had blue eyes, probably a Wend.
She wasn’t even asked whether she wanted a new gown. She didn’t; she dressed to disappear. Adelia was an observer. The only impact she ever wished to make was on her patients, and then not as a woman. Well…she’d wished to make an impact on Rowley, but she’d done that without any clothes on at all…
The poor seamstresses among the queen’s ladies weren’t consulted, either, though the necessary needlework to transform whatever material was decided on into a bliaut for her-very tight at the top, very full in the skirt, sleeves narrow to the elbow, then widening almost to the ground-would be onerous, especially as Eleanor was demanding that it should have filigree embroidery at the neck and armholes, and be finished for the Christmas feast.
Adelia wondered at seamstresses being taken to war and at anyone who required a military transport to contain presses full of dazzlingly colored brocades, silks, linens, and samite.
In the end, Eleanor decided on velvet of a dark, dark blue that had, as she said, “the bloom of the Aquitanian grape.”
When the queen did something, she did it wholeheartedly: a flimsy veil-she herself demonstrated how it should be attached to the barbette-a thin, gold circlet, a tapestried belt, embroidered slippers, a cope and hood of wool fine enough to draw through a ring, all these things were Adelia’s.
“Only your due, my dear,” Eleanor said, patting her head. “It was a very nasty demon.” She turned to Eynsham. “We’re safe from it now, aren’t we, Abbot? You said you’d disposed of it, did you not?”
Dakers. What had they done to Dakers?
“Couldn’t have it wandering around loose to attack my heart’s lady again, could I?” The abbot was jovial. “I found un hiding among the convent books and, doubting it could read, would have hanged it there and then. But there was an outcry from the good sisters so, pendent opera interrupta, I had it put in the convent lockup instead. We’ll take it with us when we go and hang it then”-he winked-“if it ain’t frozen to death in the meantime.”
There was appreciative laughter in which Eleanor joined, though she protested, “No, no, my lord, the female is possessed, we cannot execute the insane.”
“Possessed by the evil of her mistress. Better dead, lady, better dead. Like Rosamund.”
It was a long night. Nobody could retire until the queen gave her permission, and Eleanor was inexhaustible. There were games, board games, fox and geese, Alquerque, dice. Everybody was required to sing, even Adelia, who had no voice to speak of and was laughed at for it.
When it was Mansur’s turn, Eleanor was enraptured and curious. “Beautiful, beautiful. Is that not a castrato?”
Adelia, sitting on a stool at the queen’s feet, admitted it was.
“How interesting. I have heard them in Outremer but never in England. They can pleasure a woman, I believe, but must remain childless, is that true?”
“I don’t know, lady.” It was, but Adelia wasn’t prepared to discuss it in this company.
The room became hot. More games, more singing.
Adelia began to nod, jerked awake each time by a draft from the door as people came and went.
Jacques was gone-no, there he was, bringing more food from the kitchen. Montignard was gone, and Mansur, no, they had come back from wherever they’d been. The abbot was gone, reappearing with string to satisfy Eleanor’s sudden desire to play cat’s cradle. There he was again, this time with Mansur, a table between them, their heads bent over a chessboard. A courtier entered, clutching snow to cool the wine…another young man, the one who’d thrown snowballs at the nuns, was singing to a lute…
Adelia forced herself to her feet. Crossing to the chess table, she surveyed the board. “You’re losing,” she said in Arabic.
Mansur didn’t look up. “He is the better player, Allah curse him.”
“Say something more.”
He grunted. “What do you want me to say? I am tired of these people. When do we go?”
Adelia addressed Eynsham. “My lord Mansur instructs me to ask you, my lord, what you can tell him about the death of the woman, Rosamund Clifford.”
The abbot raised his head to look at her and, again, there was that piercing connection. “Does he? Does he indeed? And why should my lord Mansur want to inquire of it?”
“He is a doctor; he has an interest in poison.”
Eleanor had heard Rosamund’s name. She called across the room. “What is that? What are you saying?”
Immediately, the abbot was another man, bucolic, convivial. “The good doctor do want to know about bitch Rosamund’s death. Wasn’t I with you when we heard of it, my sweeting? Didn’t they tell us as we was landing, having crossed from Normandy? Didn’t I fall to my knees and give thanks to the Great Revenger of all sin?”
Eleanor held out her hands to him. “You did, Abbot, you did.”
“But you knew Rosamund before that,” Adelia said. “You said so when we were at Wormhold.”
“Did I know Rosamund? Oh, I knew her. Could I allow vileness unchecked in my own county? My old daddy would have been ashamed. How many days did I spend in that Jezebel’s lair, a Daniel exhorting her to fornicate no more?” He was playing to the queen, but his eyes never left Adelia’s.
More songs, more games, until even Eleanor was tired. “To bed, good people. Go to bed.”
As he escorted Adelia home, Mansur was broody, chafed by his defeat at chess, of which he was himself a skilled exponent. “He is a fine player, that priest. I do not like him.”
“He had a hand in Rosamund’s death,” Adelia said, “I know it; he was taunting me with it.”
“He was not there.”
True, Eynsham had been across the Channel when Rosamund died. But there was something.…
“Who was the fat one with the pox?” Mansur asked. “He took me outside to show me. He wants a salve.”
“Montignard? Montignard has the pox? Serve him right.” Adelia was irritable with fatigue. It was nearly dawn. A Matins antiphon from the direction of the chapel accompanied them as they trudged.
Mansur raised the lantern to light her up the guesthouse steps. “Has the woman left the door unbarred for you?”
“I expect so.”
“She should not. It is not safe.”
“Then I’ll have to wake her, won’t I?” Adelia said, going up. “And her name’s Gyltha. Why don’t you ever say it?” Damn it, she thought, they’re as good as married.
She stumbled over something large that rested on the top step, nearly sending it over the edge and down to the alley. “Oh, dear God. Mansur. Mansur.”
Together, they carried the cradle into the room; the child in it was still asleep and wrapped in her blankets. She seemed to have taken no harm from being left in the cold.
The candle had gone out. Gyltha sat unmoving in the chair on which she had been waiting for Adelia to come back. For an appalling moment, Adelia thought she’d been murdered-the woman’s hand was dangling over the place where the cradle always lay.
A snore reassured her.
The three of them sat in a huddled group around the cradle, watching Allie sleep, as if afraid she would evaporate.
“Someone come in here and stole her? Put her on the step?” Gyltha couldn’t get over it.
“Yes,” Adelia told her. One inch farther on the step, just one inch…In her mind she kept seeing the cradle turn in midair as it fell into the alley some twenty feet below.
“Someone come in here? And I never heard un? Put her out on the step?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Where’s the sense in it?”
“I don’t know.” But she did.
Mansur voiced it: “He is warning you.”
“I know.”
“You ask too many questions.”
“I know.”
“What questions?” Gyltha, in her panic, wasn’t keeping up. “Who don’t want you asking questions?”
“I don’t know.” If she had, she would have groveled to him, squirmed at his feet in supplication. You’ve won. You’re cleverer than I am. Go free, I won’t interfere. But leave me Allie.